BP #6

Within this article, by the New York Times, it gives insight into what different branches of the military and Trump except in regards for the new military budget. Many branches of the military have been scrambling to get there wish list together for when congress approves the amount of military spending for next years federal budget. Trump would like to increase the military budget to $54 billion. In addition, to an increase in the pentagon budget, Trump would also like to increase the number of Army soldiers and Marines that, Trump claims, president Obama supposedly cut in his prior term. Even though that Trump has requested a quite steep increase in military funding congress is still more than likely to cut and or deny most of it. One of the reasons behind congress’s decision to cut down on the drastic increases in military spending, is the failure of the president and the Pentagon to see eye to eye on the main potential threat to the United States. Trump’s main concern seems to be the defeating the Islamic state but the Pentagon’s main priority seems to be more focused around Russia and its super power potential.

After reading this article it made me think of the ethical concept of duty. In our discussion on Monday regarding Kantian ethics, we discussed perfect and imperfect duties. A perfect duty such as the duty to not lie, always holds true. On the other hand there is an imperfect duty, such as donating to charity, that can be flexible and can be applied in a particular time and place. With Trump proposing such an expensive military budget increase, that may seem a bit overkill to some, others could try and argue that it is his duty to keep the United States safe. After Mondays discussion, Trump’s “duty” to increase military spending can be seen as an imperfect duty. This is because the world knows that the United States is the current military super power and many countries know this and keep there distance on account of all our nuclear weapons. Therefore it seems that there is no need to amp up military spending when we are not even at war. Trump has chosen his particular time and place to make it his imperfect duty to increase military spending while stripping other federally funded programs that assist many americans. Due to this situation and what Trump’s intentions are it could be easily argued that, this imperfect duty is as unneeded as it it unethical.